In the field of computers, the graphical user interface (GUI) plays an important role as regards the efficiency of the interactions between a user and a device such as for example personal computer, laptop, music player, cell phone, personal digital assistants. These devices execute various applications and programs which perform functions.
Usually, the user interacts with the applications and programs through menus, toolbar, icons, and other graphics which are displayed on the GUI. For instance, in the field of computer-aided techniques, a number of systems and programs are offered on the market for the design of objects (or parts) or assemblies of objects, forming a product, such as the one provided by Dassault Systèmes under the trademark CATIA. These CAD systems allow a user to construct and manipulate complex three dimensional (3D) models of objects or assemblies of objects through the GUI.
Traditionally, operations are graphically performed by a cursor operated by the user. The cursor is displayed on the GUI of the device, and operated via a pointing device such as a mouse, a trackball, a graphic tablet, and the like. It is also possible to perform the operations via an input peripheral device such as physical buttons (e.g. push button) or a keyboard. More recently, touch-sensitive displays have been developed. They provide a new kind of interactions between the user and the device. The touch-sensitive display can detect the presence and the location of an interaction on the display area; for instance a contact of the user's finger on the display. The touch-sensitive display thus provides an input interface which replaces the traditional pointing device. Furthermore, it also provides an output interface.
A touch-sensitive display comprises a touch-sensitive surface which is able to detect any interaction of the user with this surface. Several types of touch-sensitive display technologies have been developed, including but not limited to, resistive, surface acoustic wave, infrared, and capacitive technologies. An interaction may be provided for instance via an object (e.g. a stylus) and/or an appendice (e.g. a finger of a hand of the user). Direct interactions with what is displayed are therefore possible.
In general, a device comprising a touch-sensitive display does not comprise anymore a pointing device and/or input peripheral device. However, this can prevent the user from performing some operations which are traditionally made with a pointing device and/or input peripheral device. For instance, some operations are performed with combinations of a set of alphanumeric keys of a keyboard which inputs information to the device, and such combinations are difficult to be reproduced with a touch-sensitive display.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0079700 A1 describes a one-touch rotation method for use within a graphical user interface. The one-touch rotation method allows a user to rotate, and sometimes move, a virtual object within a virtual workspace. Rotation of the virtual object can be achieved using a one-touch user input, such as a one-finger gesture. The one-touch rotation method includes recognizing and tracking a one-touch user input, and rotating the virtual object responsive to the tracked movement of the one-touch user input.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0184939 A1 describes a method for manipulating position, size and/or orientation of one or more graphical objects displayed on a touch-sensitive screen by directly interacting with the touch-sensitive screen using two or more user interactions. The relative location of the user interactions with respect to the graphical object being manipulated is maintained throughout the manipulation. The manipulation does not require analyzing trajectories and/or characterizing a movement path of the user interactions and thereby the manipulation can be performed at relatively low processing costs.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0153492 A1 describes a touch-sensitive display surface configured to display a geographic map and receive a gesture input generated by a user on the touch-sensitive display surface while the geographic map is displayed, the gesture input defining a selected geographic area on the geographic map. A finger-pinch made with the thumb and the index finger of a user produces a finger-pinch drawn boundary box gesture input that includes a rectangular shaped geographic boundary in a space between the thumb and the index finger that defines a selected geographic area.
The copy and paste command (also referred to as duplication command) is a very common function. It may be for example performed with the key-combinations Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V of the keyboard. Nevertheless, such key-combinations are not feasible on a touch-sensitive display or at least difficult to achieve. In order to bypass the above mentioned limitation, graphical copy/paste commands have been developed.
A first method consists in performing the copy/paste command by selecting with a pointing device the object to copy, then performing an action (e.g. right click with the right button of a mouse) on the object the user wants to copy and selecting the ‘Copy’ menu which appeared consecutively to the right click. Next, the user performs another action (e.g. a right click) at the location he/she wants to copy the object, and selects the ‘Paste’ menu (e.g. a left click). However, this method requires a pointing device with at least two buttons which is not always available on a touch-sensitive device.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0228842 A1 describes a copy Tool which allows the user to copy selected items by a distance and direction defined by two picked points on a window. After the user selects the copy Tool, the user can enter two points defining the distance and direction corresponding to the position of the copied item. When performing a copy command, the first selected point acts as the base reference point for copying the objects, while the second selected point defines the distance and direction for the copied items.
Another known method consists in performing a double tap on the object to select, then pressing and holding the finger to make a selection. Then the user selects the menu ‘Copy’ which appeared nearby the selected object thanks to the former gestures. Next, the user taps twice on the position he/she wants to copy. Finally, the user clicks on the menu ‘Paste’ which appeared nearby the selected position.
This method suffers the drawback that a copy Tool is selected, which may be a cumbersome task and time consuming when the user needs to make several copy/paste operations. For that reason, methods based on gestures have been proposed.
A known method consists in selecting the object to copy, and then to do a copy gesture on the selection. For instance, the gesture may be tapping concomitantly the thumb and the middle finger on the touch-sensitive surface. The paste gesture is carried out on the place where the user wants to paste the object.
These various methods for performing a copy/paste operation suffer several drawbacks. For instance, the achievement of these methods is time consuming. For instance, the menu ‘Copy’ needs to be called in order to trigger the copy/paste function, which involves performing a specific gesture for calling the menu. Moreover, the gestures required to trigger the copy/paste are not natural and ergonomical for the user. In addition, it is pretty hard for the user to position the duplicated object at a precise position; notably, this is the consequence of the non ergonomical gestures.
Thus, according to the limitations of the existing solutions shortly discussed above, there is a need for an improved method for duplicating an object in a touch-sensitive display. Preferably, the method should improve the precision of the gesture, which should be intuitive for the user.